Culture Night 2024 @The Hugh Lane Gallery

5.30-6pm Méabh McKenna

Utilising the harp, voice, electronics and percussion, Méabh McKenna is a multi-instrumental sound artist based in Dublin city. Drawing on years of experimentation and collaboration, her live performances have evolved from traversing the eclectic worlds of traditional, classical, and early music, intuitively weaving them with contemporary and electronic elements. Her solo project forges a sound world of mycelial improvisation and memory, connecting the ancient with the futuristic to make a music of resonance and reflection that’s entirely her own.

6.10-6.40pm Ordnance Survey

Electronic music composer Neil O ‘Connor has been making electronic music for the past 24 years, most notably under Somadrone. Ordnance Survey is a collaborative project and attempts to fuse the worlds of electronica, new music, jazz, improvisation and with modular synthesizers. Relative Phase (2019) features collaborations from Sean Mac Erlaine, Linda Buckley, Kate Ellis, John Mc Entire (Tortoise) while Ampere (2020) features Donal Lunny and Cormac MacDiarmada (Lankum). During the lockdown, Field Work (2021) was completed during lockdown and featured field recordings made in Dublin. Nomos: O’Riada Reimagined (2022), is a reworking of O’Riada’s work for electronics and pedal steel (David Murphy).

6.50-7.20pm Sharon / Ellie / Matthew

Ellie O’Neill / Sharon Phelan / Matthew Nolan

Ellie O’Neill is an songwriter, vocalist and recording artist from Co. Meath. Her work is tender, rich and original, and explores intimacy, loss, friendship and queerness. She is currently working on her debut album, and performing in a solo capacity regularly around Ireland and further afield. At the moment she is interested in the poems of Minnie Bruce Pratt, sea swimming, and laughing. Sharon Phelan is a Dublin-based artist, writer and musician specialising in digital media and sound. Her practice researches resonance and poetics of place, often in site-responsive and collaborative projects. Her ongoing project, Vocal Artefacts, explores ways of listening and expanded notions of voice through artistic research, field recordings and sound essays.

Matthew Nolan is a Dublin based musician, composer, academic and curator. He has produced new work in collaboration with some of the finest musicians around, both Irish and international. He has worked on commissions from a range of prestigious performing arts institutions, including National Gallery of Ireland, BAM and Film at Lincoln Centre in New York, The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., Kilkenny Arts Festival, Bram Stoker Festival, and the St Patrick’s Festival. His most recent projects were presented at MoLI in Dublin as part of their Ulysses centenary project and at the New York Film Festival. 2024 will see the release of Pomes Penyeach by Universal Music, produced in collaboration with Adrian Crowley and based on James Joyce’s short book of poetry.

7.30-8pm Daniel Luke

Composer Daniel Luke is a Dublin based pianist, composer, and arranger. A multi instrumentalist, he began his musical career as drummer and founding member of Gypsies On The Autobahn, with whom he released two critically acclaimed studio albums. In early 2020, Daniel embarked on a new and personal project: a collection of solo piano compositions that would eventually become his debut album “Shadow Dance”. Recorded in his childhood home, on the piano he learned to play on, this album represents a labor of love and a lifetime of learning. What sets Daniel’s work apart is his ability to blend musical styles and influences into something entirely his own. By incorporating his classical training with elements of jazz, contemporary, and neoclassical music, he has created a vibrant sound that is distinctly his own.

8.20-8.50pm Rattling Ark

Rattling Ark is a new experimental folk project featuring Kevin Murphy, Thomas Haugh and Aki. While primarily drawing from the well of Irish folk its bloodlines also pulse with dark and psychedelic timbres. The use of non traditional instruments helps to situate folk tunes and songs in other-worldly sonic contexts. Kevin Murphy plays the cello and sings, Thomas Haugh plays Ukranian Tsymbally, Zithers, Percussion and Electronics while Aki plays the Nyckleharpa and Violyra. These musicians have previously worked together in Irish bands Slow Moving Clouds and Seti The First.

9-9.40pm Everything Shook

Everything Shook is an Irish three-piece electronic band formed in 2012. The group consists of Robyn Bromfield (beats, synths & vocals), Jessica Kennedy (synths & vocals) and Áine Stapleton (bass guitar & vocals). They have been included in Remarkable Women of Dark Wave 2022 WL/WH Italy, Women Who Rocked Golden Plec, and Best Irish Acts The Irish Times. The band write, produce, record and mix their own music. The band have played internationally at major music festivals and renowned venues including Electric Picnic (Ireland), Open Ear (Ireland), Hangar supporting Fujiya & Miyagi (Ireland), The Tivoli supporting Goblin (Ireland), Trash Bar (NYC), Cake Shop (NYC) with guest live percussion by Salvatore Principato of Liquid Liquid, The Social (London), BAM (Belgrade, Serbia), Soma Bookstation (Kosovo), Radio Bar (Albania), Bear in the Woods & Arcadian Field Festival (Ireland). Their immersive live shows are injected with mechanical choreographies, performed by Jessica Kennedy and Áine Stapleton, that intensify the electronic sound environments dictated by synths and Korg DS.

Throughout evening

Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi – Spoken Word Artist

Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi is a writer, editor, arts facilitator, and cultural consultant based in Wicklow, Ireland. She is a commissioned poet on the Poetry as Commemoration project, an initiative of the Irish Poetry Reading Archive at UCD Library. She was selected for the Screen Ireland 2021 X-Pollinator Program. Her work is published in The Art of the Glimpse anthology, and she co-edited the Writing Home: The ‘New Irish’ Poets anthology. Chiamaka is on the editorial board of Unapologetic Magazine and the advisory board of CIACLA and serves as a Creative Writing Mentor at Fighting Words. She has been invited to share her work internationally, most recently at the 2024 Canadian-Irish Artists Symposium in Toronto and the 2024 Irish Arts & Writers Festival in San Francisco.